The process of learning that everyone must go through.

1. Four Stages of
Learning
Presented by Rev. Irby Johnson, CPA, M. Div, D.D.

2. Four Stages of Learning
A model about how we learn.
Learning can be said to take place in
four stages:

3. Four Stages
• I. Unconscious Incompetence
• II. Conscious incompetence
• III. Conscious Competence
• IV. Unconscious competence

4. I. Unconscious Incompetence
Blissful ignorance. We are not
aware that we don’t know
something.
We don't know what we don't
know.

5. II Conscious incompetence
• We discover a skill we wish to learn - driving
a car, riding a bike
We have a desire to learn. Often this means
not succeeding at first.
This is learning; unfortunately, in our culture
it is often labelled 'failure'.
We feel uncomfortable.
We know there is something we want to know,
but we know that we do not yet know it.

7. III Conscious Competence
• We acquire the skill. We have become
consciously competent. Our conscious
mind can only cope with a small number
of new bits of information at any one
time.
We have to concentrate on what we
need to do.
We can do it, but it is difficult and
stressful.

9. IV. Unconscious competence
• Lastly, we blend the skills together and they
become habits - we can then do them while
our mind is on other things.
We have reached the stage of unconscious
competence.
Our confidence and ability have peaked, we
no longer have to concentrate on what we
do; this is the start of the next learning curve

11. IV Unconscious competence
(continued)
• We do it without consciously thinking about
how we do it. It is almost instinctive.
• Anyone who has truly mastered an art or
discipline has reached this stage. They
make it appear so easy that we think “O’
anybody can do that”. Then we try to
duplicate what we have witnessed by a
“Master” and we are embarrassed.

12. No matter how skilled someone
seems to be, they have gone
through, at a minimum, these four
stages.
In different areas of our life we will
be at different stages on different
learning curves.

13. Four Stages of
Learning
Presented by Rev. Irby Johnson, CPA, M. Div, D.D.